STEVEN.FOERS, cluttering up the web since 2001http://steven.foers.co.uk
Random stuff that's likely to be of interest to no one but me, maybe.Tue, 02 Apr 2013 21:00:59 +0000en-UShourly1Selecting ALL mails in Gmailhttp://steven.foers.co.uk/gmail/selecting-all-mails-in-gmail.html
http://steven.foers.co.uk/gmail/selecting-all-mails-in-gmail.html#commentsTue, 02 Apr 2013 21:00:59 +0000sfoershttp://steven.foers.co.uk/?p=284Earlier on today I wanted to archive a bunch (over 7000) emails from within the Gmail web app. My inbox was overflowing, it was time to archive.

In the old interface, I’d select all on the page using the tick box at the very top of the message window, a yellow box would then pop up asking if I wanted to select ALL (not just all on that page, but every single mail I had under that label). I’d click the text in the yellow box, all would be selected and I could move, archive or delete away.

In the new Gmail web app interface, this select all emails option didn’t exist. I could select all 50 emails in the message window, but not the other 6950. If I have to do them in batches of 50, this is going to take a while.

The answer to the problem is a simple one, but one it took me a while to work out.

You’ll only see this issue if you’re using one of the new inbox views. I have mine set to display unread mails first:

No matter how you do it, whilst in this view, the maximum messages that can be selected in one go is the number available in the message window (50 in my case).

What you have to do is hover over the inbox label heading, click the disclosure arrow that appears and select ‘Classic’ from the views menu:

Once you’ve selected classic view, go to the select all tick box, click it and the familiar yellow bar will appear letting you select ALL messages.

That’s it – you can now delete all those emails offering to make you rich/bigger/rich & bigger…

]]>http://steven.foers.co.uk/gmail/selecting-all-mails-in-gmail.html/feed0Ripping BluRays on iMac for Apple TV2http://steven.foers.co.uk/home-av/ripping-blurays-on-imac-for-apple-tv2.html
http://steven.foers.co.uk/home-av/ripping-blurays-on-imac-for-apple-tv2.html#commentsThu, 09 Feb 2012 21:06:33 +0000sfoershttp://steven.foers.co.uk/?p=236Since upgrading the TV, adding a AV amp, a BluRay player and wiring in a set of 5.1 speakers, I’ve been looking to get some milage out of the Apple TV we have owned for getting on for a year now.

I jail broke the ATV (second generation black unit) some time ago, back when it was running iOS 4.2.1. The jailbreak was mainly to allow me to play movies directly off a Western Digital My Book NAS, rather than having the iMac powered up every time we wanted to watch a film. I installed XMBC and everything worked kind of OK, but it never really got much use.

Since then the AV system has been installed, and the iMac is down in the living room now, so is generally speaking on all the time. As well as that we have a complete Cat6 wired network going to all network compatible devices in the house.

A few weeks ago I decided to upgrade the ATV to the latest iOS (4.4.4), thereby un-jailbreaking it and going back to the ‘Apple’ way of doing things.

The main thing I’d like to use the ATV for is playing rips of our DVD and BluRay collection. To do this I needed to rip the disc in a compatible format to iTunes, and add the required metadata to the rip so it gets the cover art etc to appear in the ATV menu.

Thus begins my tail of ripping BluRay’s and the process I use to do so…

Before I go any further, the legal ramifications of ripping BluRay discs you own is a little sketchy to say the least. I doubt you’ll get into bother if they are your own discs (and remain so) but please read and follow these instructions at your own risk

First thing you’ll need is a drive to read the BlueRay. As you’ll no doubt know, there is no provision on a Mac of any type for reading BluRays (for more, read here).

There is all sorts of info on the ‘net about what file formats to rip BluRays into etc, but I could find very little on what drives are and aren’t available – and more importantly – compatible with a Mac.

After quite a bit of googling, I found what looked to be the ideal candidate. It has a small footprint, is bus powered (power comes from the USB cable you use to connect it to the computer), was able to read 3D films and seemed to be producing good results for other Mac users.

The drive is a Samsung SE-406AB. The unit is very compact, taking up hardly any more space than a BluRay disc case. The unit is able to be powered off a single USB feed, but if there isn’t enough power from one USB port the lead that comes with the drive has a second USB plug on it to draw any extra power it might need. My 2011 iMac seems to have enough power in a single USB port to power it.

Apparently this drive can be plugged into the back of our Samsung D7000 TV to play DVD’s and BluRays too.

Once you have your drive you need software to take the film off the disc and onto your hard drive. As yet I haven’t found anything that makes a decent job of extracting the film and making it iTunes compatible.

MakeMKV

Because of this, the ripping is a two step process. First step is to get the film onto the iMac, best way to do this whilst retaining the highest quality picture and sound is to convert it to an MKV file. The software I use for this is MakeMKV. MakeMKV is a free application that does exactly what it says. It takes the contents of a BluRay (or DVD) and turns it into an MKV file. There are no settings as far as quality goes – you do get a like for like copy. The only part you have to select is what item on the disc you want to convert, what soundtrack you want (language and speaker requirement) and if you want subtitles or not.

As you are wanting to rip the film, and as that’ll be by far the biggest file on the disc, select the file with the largest size. Expand this and select the audio formats you can handle. Next specify where you want the MKV file to be placed, once done you can start the ripping process. It’s relatively quick – between 1 and 2 hours depending on the size of the film.

Something I found out after taking my Mac from 4gb of Ram to 16gb is the ripping process uses very little ram but all of your CPU and then some. If you fire up activity monitor during MKV creation you’ll notice the CPU is running at upwards of 350%. The extra Ram hasn’t really made much difference.

An hour and a half down the line and we’ve now got our MKV file on the desktop. Because we’re not compressing at this point, the file is a hefty 30gb. You don’t need to make too many of these before you’ve filled your Hard drive up.

At this point, you’ll still not be able to play this file on your Mac (unless you have a copy of VLC on there). So we now need to convert this into a file format iTunes is happy to accept. At the same time we’ll be adding in all the film metadata (actors, synopsis, cover art) so when you view it in iTunes or on the ATV you get all the information you need. If you have parental controls set up on the ATV it’s at this point you want to make sure you add in the certification rating for the film.

iVI

To convert the MKV to M4V I use iVI by South Pole Software. I have used Handbrake in the past, but the options are so extensive you end up spending most of your time fiddling around – the other difference between the two is Handbrake doesn’t get you the film metadata, so you’d need an extra step in your workflow for that.

The only quality settings you need to worry about with iVI is defining what the film will be played through, you click the different options depending on what you’re doing and iVI takes care of optimising the M4V file to the output chosen.

There are also options to have the M4V file added to iTunes, you can automate a ‘hot folder’ for transcoding anything that appears in there and there is a rules based processing system that allows you to do certain things dependent on file name or the media type etc.

If you ensure the name of the MKV file matches that of the film, you will then see iVI display a thumbnail of the cover art. If you click on the film within the iVI interface, then select ‘info’ you’ll be able to view all the metadata iVI has managed to find for the film. If it was unable to find any metadata you can add the film name into this screen and perform a search to locate the metadata.

Once you’re happy with the settings and metadata you can click ‘convert’ to begin the transcoding from MKV to M4V. The reason I mentioned the MakeMKV process was quite quick at 1 or 2 hours is because this step of the process takes an age. I’m not sure exactly how long as I set it to run during the night, but I imagine it’s around 5 or 6 hours.

Once the transcode has completed, the M4V file will be placed into the iTunes library and will appear in the ATV menu (so long as iTunes is running).

I had a few issues with the first few M4V files were they stuttered very badly within ATV – so much so I felt ill watching them. I sent a mail to South Pole Software detailing the problem, they responded very quickly with a simple fix and everything has been running fine ever since. The support from them is great, and the software does exactly what I want with no fuss and no unnecessary options or ‘fluff’ getting in the way.

Along with the ripping if discs for playing from the ATV, and the recent introduction to the UK of Netflix (available on the ATV) it moves us a step closer to cutting the cable on Virgin/Sky and going completely online for our TV watching.

]]>http://steven.foers.co.uk/home-av/ripping-blurays-on-imac-for-apple-tv2.html/feed0AIAIAI TMA-1 headphones, first thoughts after a few hours usehttp://steven.foers.co.uk/audio/aiaiai-tma-1-headphones-first-thoughts-after-a-few-hours-use.html
http://steven.foers.co.uk/audio/aiaiai-tma-1-headphones-first-thoughts-after-a-few-hours-use.html#commentsTue, 14 Jun 2011 22:41:03 +0000sfoershttp://steven.foers.co.uk/?p=222Update 10/7/2011 : Amazon are now selling the TMA-1s, and at a great price too. Currently you can get them for £127.46, stocks look to be limited so head over to Amazon and save yourself almost £40 on the Apple store price.

I’ve had the AIAIAI TMA-1 headphones for a few hours – here are my initial thoughts…

(This is coming from someone who will be using these mainly for music whilst working (on a Mac) as well as during train/plane journeys etc. My listening is varied and eclectic, all my music is in iTunes mostly ripped from CD’s at as high a bit rate as I can get).

The packaging is quite something. I hate to say it’s Apple like, because they didn’t invent or patent well packaged things, but it’s certainly on par with anything from them.

The headphones are the first things you come across as you open the box. Upon taking them and the foam panel out you are met with two sealed cable bags. One has the iPhone compatible cable (has mic and vol up/down + end call buttons on it, this is around 3” inches from one end of the cable), the other is a standard straight cable with around 18” of coils around two thirds of the way along it.

The iPhone cable has standard 3.5mm jack bent to 90 degrees on the iPhone end, and another 3.5mm jack (this time straight) on the end that fits the headphones. The standard cable has a 3.5mm on one end (for the headphones) and a threaded 3.5mm on the other that comes with a 6.35mm adapter fitted, which can be unscrewed to reveal a 3.5mm jack.

Having these two cables is perfect for me, the coiled standard cable will stay almost permanently connected to my iMac, the other to be used for iPhone/iPad duties.

All the jacks are gold finished.

Next to the two cable packs are the instruction book (you need instructions to use headphones? Hang fire on that, there is some interesting stuff in there), the nifty storage sack and a second set of ear pads.

The pads, Protein Leather on one set and Semi-Leather on the other, offer (according to the TMA-1 sales sheet) slightly different frequency responses – mainly that the Protein Leather has a slightly better top end, drops of by a few dB on the mid levels then pretty much matches the Semi-Leather on the high end.

It’d be difficult for me to comment on this as I’ve only unwrapped one set of pads to date.

The storage sack is pretty cool – it’s has a mid grey finish with the chunkiest zip you’ve ever seen. Inside is a yellow mesh finish. All very high quality and plush.

The instruction book has a bunch of technical info in it, some details on fitting the different ear pads and and explenation on where the name ‘TMA-1’ came from. The crux of it is, TMA-1 (Tycho Magnetic Anomaly-1) is taken from Arthur C. Clarke’s science fiction novel “2001: A Space Odyssey” and refers to a black Monolith, which is extremely long-lived and reliable – just as the TMA-1. Nice.

All this packaging stuff and extra goodies is are well and good, but at the end of the day it’s really all about the headphones.

They are superbly put together. The quality of the headphones and pads is excellent. If you’re into labels, Day-Glo colours and branding these really aren’t for you. There isn’t (that I can see) any manufacturer or model names on them at all. The only text I can see is the L and R to tell you which side goes on which ear (scratch that, I’ve found a manufacturer name – it’s on the inside of the headband, not somewhere anyone is going to look in a hurry). The finish is a very slightly rubberised matt.

Size adjusters on each side of the headphones smoothly, but with a reassuring clunk, adjust the fit to suit your head. The coiled cables on the inside of the headphones ensure that whatever size you set your headphones are at you don’t end up with loops of surplus cable.

The fit on the TMA-1’s is pretty much perfect for me. On my previous over ear headphones, a rather battered pair of Sony MDR-V300’s (not in the same league as the TMA-1’s but all I have to compare with) the fit was on the tight side. As I wear glasses the tight fit meant that after an hour or so it would get rather uncomfortable with the arms of my glasses and my ears being put under pressure from the Sony headphones.

A few hours in and no such problems from the AIAIAI headphones. The fit is light but firm and the pads are, well, padded. Padded enough to mean there is no unnecessary noise leakage (great for late night Spinal Tap, ‘up to 11’ moments when you’re partner is asleep) but still no ear ache from glasses etc.

On the inside of the headband there is a soft rubber padding. Neither big enough or soft enough to make a huge difference in the comfort or fit (though it doesn’t need to be as they are more than comfortable enough as they are), but certainly good to stop the headphones slipping.

Up to now, I’ve listened to a handful of albums (all CD’s ripped to iTunes using Apple Loseless Encoding), they would be:

The Killers – Live at the Albert Hall
Iron Maiden – Flight 666 -The Original Soundtrack
Seasick Steve – I Started out with Nothin’ and I Still Got Most Of It Left
Paul Weller – Fly On The Wall (B Sides & Rarities)

The sound right now is what I’d call (from a muggles point of view) tight. The bass is there (Steam by Paul Weller, the bass is unreal!) as you’d expect from headphones with a pedigree on the TMA-1’s. Mid range is loosening up as I listen more, but has a little way to go yet. The top end is not quite where it needs to be, everything is a little on the warm side – but from what I know from my B&W speakers, my first foray into decent hi-fi equipment, this only really kicks in once the speakers have had a bit of use. I’ve read a few reviews on the TMA-1’s that suggest they bed in nicely and the pair I listened to in the Apple Store (that’d been used by every pre-pubescent kid in Gateshead) showed what they’ll offer when run in.

To claim the TMA-1’s as a success I’m looking for them to compete (or beat) my Sure SE215’s. Different beasts in the headphone world, the Sure’s being in ear as opposed to the on ear AIAIAI’s on ear. But I’d hope after running them in the TMA-1’s would sound that little bit better.

I’ll add some pictures to this soon, as well as an update once things have settled down. As it stands the verdict is very good, with a potential to be excellent, certainly worth the money.

]]>http://steven.foers.co.uk/audio/aiaiai-tma-1-headphones-first-thoughts-after-a-few-hours-use.html/feed0CSS3 column-count and multiple paragraphshttp://steven.foers.co.uk/coding/css3-column-count-and-multiple-paragraphs.html
http://steven.foers.co.uk/coding/css3-column-count-and-multiple-paragraphs.html#commentsTue, 07 Jun 2011 21:31:35 +0000sfoershttp://steven.foers.co.uk/?p=193If you’re looking to use the CSS3 column count property as a way to give your site visitors (those who use modern browsers) easier to read multi-column layouts, this may be of help…

First off, this property isn’t supported across the board, and of those browsers that do allow control of columns through CSS most require a proprietary prefix. If you want the text to appear in columns for everyone you’re going to have to have some help from JS or PHP etc.

If you’ve got your fall back sorted, or if you’re happy to give those on older browsers single column text, you can apply the right properties to the paragraph tag – or so I though.

It’s pretty obvious what’s supposed to be going on there – 2 columns spanning the width of the page with a 20px gap between. Simples.

That works perfectly until you come across multiple paragraphs in a block of text. Then it all goes a bit wrong.

For example, imagine we want to separate the following block of text into two columns:

<p>One one one one one one one one one one one one one one one one one one one one one one one one one one one one one one one one one one one one one one one one one one one one one one one one one one.</p>
<p>Two two two two two two two two two two two two two two two two two</p>
<p>Three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three three.</p>

If we use the CSS from earlier, the output (with a bit of extra styling to make it look half decent) is this:

As you can see the paragraphs are being individually separated into columns, not the block of text as a whole.

All of this makes perfect sense when you stop and think about it, but very few of the demos and tutorials currently available show multi-paragraph examples; and all show the <p> tag as having the column-count applied to it.

The simple and obvious solution to this is to wrap the block of text in something, and apply the column-count property to that.

To keep things neat and proper, I’d suggest either <article> or <section>* though you may have other items within these you don’t want the column-count applied to (headings, images etc). If that’s the case you may need to go down the <div> route wrapping just the paragraphs and nothing else. You’ll then end up with this:

]]>http://steven.foers.co.uk/coding/css3-column-count-and-multiple-paragraphs.html/feed0New York, Feb 2011http://steven.foers.co.uk/travel/new-york-feb-2011.html
http://steven.foers.co.uk/travel/new-york-feb-2011.html#commentsThu, 10 Mar 2011 23:40:13 +0000sfoershttp://steven.foers.co.uk/?p=186As it was Jules ‘big’ birthday this year (you know the one) I couldn’t really get away with the usual ironing board cover, or dish washer powder. No, this one would have to be special.

I already set the bar pretty high by buying her a Dishwasher and new Tumble Dryer just before Christmas, so my work was cut out to make this ‘big’ birthday a special one.

I spent quite a bit of time talking through various destinations that my colleagues had visited, some unusual, some not so.

In the end, I went for 5 days in New York.

We had an amazing time, more info on what we saw and did when I’ve time – in the mean time, here are some of the photos…

]]>http://steven.foers.co.uk/travel/new-york-feb-2011.html/feed0Syncing iPhoto with Flickr to backup your photoshttp://steven.foers.co.uk/mac/syncing-iphoto-with-flickr-to-backup-your-photos.html
http://steven.foers.co.uk/mac/syncing-iphoto-with-flickr-to-backup-your-photos.html#commentsThu, 20 Jan 2011 23:39:21 +0000sfoershttp://steven.foers.co.uk/?p=115There are a number of ways to sync your iPhoto collection to your Flickr account, each with it’s own advantage disadvantage.

I started out by using iPhotos own Flickr uploader, but quickly found that if i deleted a photo or photos from within iPhoto they would disappear off the ‘net too.

The reason I wanted to sync with Flickr was for backup purposes, so the idea of my Flickr set disappearing if I deleted the photo/album/event from iPhoto wasn’t an ideal outcome.

What I wanted was a one way method of syncing onto Flickr. A one way sync that always retained the photo on Flickr where the only method of removal would be either through the admin area of the Flickr website, or through a specific Flickr app (iPad/iPhone app for example).

Ideally, I also wanted the iPhoto data associated with the images to be uploaded to Flickr too – so that’d include the geographic location of the photo, the tags I’d associated with it, the event it was part of and the Faces info that had been assigned.

Finally I wanted the uploads to default into a private setting – I didn’t want my pictures to show up for all on Flickr to see. If I did want that then I’d be happy to set it through the Flickr UI (or iPad app).

The solution I’ve been using for around 6 months now, and that fits the bill reasonably well is called FlickrFriend.

What you’ll need

Firstly, you’ll need either iPhoto ’09 or ’11 with some photos in it.

You’ll also need a copy of FlickrFriend, which at the time of writing this cost costs 15 euros (+25% tax if you are inside EU).

FlickrFriend (by Unpaq - http://unpaq.com/) allows you to Sync your iPhoto library (or a subset of your library) to Flickr. It retains the Faces info from iPhoto in the form of tags and retains any tags you’ve already applied to a photo. You get options to exclude albums from the upload, and you can set who can see your photos once they’re uploaded. It works with the last two versions of iPhoto, though theres an issue with the Faces data from iPhoto ’11 that’s currently unresolved – more about that at the end (or go take a look now if you’re inpatient).

FlickrFriend compares the photo capture time to uniquely identify each photo. Every time you take a picture with your digital camera it collects data about the camera settings along with the time and date the picture was taken. FlickrFriend uses this to identify each photo and to compare the photos on your Flickr account with those in your iPhoto collection.

And finally, you’ll need a Flickr account. You can do this perfectly well with the standard free account, but if you have a large amount of photos you really should opt for the Pro account. With the free account you can upload 2 videos and 300MB (max photo size 15mb) worth of photos each calendar month and you only have access to smaller versions of your images. The Pro account however allows you to upload unlimited numbers of photos (max photo size 20mb), unlimited videos and access to full size versions of your images.

The Pro account costs US$24.95 a year – less if you buy it for more than a year.

Setting up iPhoto

The nice thing about using this method to sync photos onto Flickr (rather than the iPhoto inbuilt method) is that you won’t need to change anything at all in iPhoto itself. If you’re happy with your Events, Albums or Faces groups then you’re fine as you are.

One thing you do have to look out for is any TIFF or PSD files you might have in your collection. I had big problems with these when I first started using FlickrFriend – once it got to them the whole upload process would fail.

I’m not sure if it was a file size or file type issue, but either way once FlickrFriend got to them it would stall.

The best way round this is to move them all into a specific Album, then within the FlickrFriend app mark this Album to be ignored.

Setting up FlickrFriend

This is where the most effort is required, but even then it’s hardly difficult.

Firstly, register your copy of FlickrFriend with Flickr – without this you’ll be unable to upload your photos.

Click the Preferences icon in the top left corner to open up the Preferences window.

Now enter your Flickr user name into the box provided. At this point, you’d expect a button that would send you off to register this copy of FlickrFriend with Flickr, but there isn’t one. To finalise the registration process you have to start the Sync – so before we complete the registration we need to make sure we’ve got all the sync options set correctly.

The first step is to decide how you want the uploaded images to appear in Flickr – if, like me you want to be the only one to see the photos then leave it set to the default. If you have friends or family (or both) set up in Flickr and you’d like them to see the photos too, then tick the appropriate box. Or if you really don’t care who sees your images go for the ‘Anyone (Public)’ approach.

It would be nice to be able to change the viewing permissions through a tag, or by specific Albums or Events within iPhoto – if you do find the FlickrFriend viewing permissions to be a bit to restrictive you can change the settings for each image/set/album once it’s uploaded in the usual way through the Flickr UI.

To change how FlickrFriend uploads your images you need to go to the next panel of the preferences window – ‘Photos’.

Once here you can set wether FlickrFriend uploads Photos & Video, just photos or just video. Don’t forget if you’re on the free Flickr account you can only upload two videos a month.

You can also select an album to ignore – this is where you get to ignore the collection of TIFF, PSD and other monster image files that FlickrFriend would baulk at.

Flickr items

‘Update Flickr titles to match iPhoto’ – by default, when FlickrFriend uploads images to Flickr and uses the title from iPhoto. If you were to edit the title on Flickr, and this option was ticked in FlickrFriend, when you next synced your data you’d have your Flickr titles replaced with your iPhoto titles. So beware – even though your photos will not be replaced on Flickr, the metadata associated to them can be.

Flickr Sets

Flickr sets are like albums, or events in iPhoto – they are buckets for your photos. The first two options will tell FlickrFriend to create Flickr sets to match the way you’ve organised your photos in iPhoto.

The last option will remove photos until your Flickr sets match your iPhoto albums or events – use sparingly!

Flickr tags

These last two options are pretty obvious – if you’ve used the faces feature or if you’ve added keywords to any of your photos and you want this information to be included with the photos you upload to Flickr, keep these ticked.

Authorising FlickrFriend with Flickr

The last thing you need to do before starting to upload your images is to authorise FlickrFriend to have access to your Flickr account.

you’ve already entered your Flickr username into the first of the two preferences panes, and you’ve set all the other preferences for how you’d like your photos to be handled.

To finish the process, go to the main FlickrFriend window and click ‘Start Sync’.

You’ll then see a window pop up asking you to authorise your account. Click on ‘Authorize…’ and you’ll be taken to the Flickr website, to a special page that asks you to confirm you want to authorise FlickrFriend.

Click ‘Next’ against the option that says you were asked by FlickrFriend to connect to your Flickr account and follow the process through to the end.
Once you’re done you’ll be authorised – you only need to do this once.

At this point the sync process begins.

Issues

As mentioned earlier, there are a few issues with FlickrFriend.

The biggest one I’ve found is the incompatibility between iPhoto ’11 and the Faces data it applies to the photos.

When I used FlickrFriend with iPhoto ’09 it would upload the Faces data as a tag against the photo with no problem at all. With iPhoto ’11 it stalls the process if you include the Faces information.

If you disable the Faces info from being uploaded (you do this in the second preference pane, the very last option) then it all works perfectly.

I’m not too worried about missing this info. FlickrFriend will upload any new metadata added to a photo, so once the issue has been fixed by the developer and I turn this option back on again all the photos on Flickr that are missing Faces tags will be updated.

Unpaq don’t seem to have updated FlickrFriend in a while, which is usually a bad sign for independent software. However, they do have a reasonably activegetsatisfaction.com community, so hopefully the issue above will be resolved soon (fingers crossed).

A feature that isn’t available in FlickrFriend, but would be a big help, is the ability to automatically start the sync process. Ideally I’d like my sync to happen once a day in the middle of the night. This isn’t currently possible, neither with Applescript or with an iCal event. When you want to sync you have to manually start the process.

Finally, I’d also like geographical data (Places) added in iPhoto to make it into Flickr. Currently this data is not carried over in the Sync process.

On the whole, I’m pleased with the way FlickrFriend syncs my iPhoto ’11 collection to Flickr.

It’s not 100% perfect, what with the issues mentioned above, but it’s close enough for the time being. If the developer can fix the Faces bug and add in automated Sync it’d be about perfect.

There is a trial version of FlickrFriend on the Unpaq site if you’d like to give it a go.

]]>http://steven.foers.co.uk/mac/syncing-iphoto-with-flickr-to-backup-your-photos.html/feed2Testing my new URL shortener, must make a very long url to see if it workshttp://steven.foers.co.uk/playground/testing-my-new-url-shortener-must-make-a-very-long-url-to-see-if-it-works.html
http://steven.foers.co.uk/playground/testing-my-new-url-shortener-must-make-a-very-long-url-to-see-if-it-works.html#commentsThu, 20 Jan 2011 20:22:08 +0000sfoershttp://steven.foers.co.uk/?p=98This is a thoroughly pointless post, put here purely to test the new URL shortener I’ve put together.

The url I’m using – http://foe.rs is actually a Serbian TLD and conveniently spells out my surname.

The shortening software is YOURLS which is installed on hosting at http://foe.rs (more about YOURLS once i’ve had chance to test it).

This blog (http://steven.foers.co.uk) has the YOURLS WordPress plugin installed which auto posts to Twitter (including the shortened URL) every time I post here. Or at least it should. If it works, that’s why I’m typing this mindless drivel.

Looks like Facebook might have had a few people complaining about this over the weekend, they’ve just posted on their development blog that the feature will be removed whilst they work out how to communicate the change, and the implications of the change, better.

If you’ve entered your address and telephone number into your Facebook profile, you might want to check the privacy screen next time you allow a third party app access to your profile. This friday just gone (14th January 2011) Facebook changed it’s policy ever so slightly to allow developers of third party applications access to your address and mobile phone number. Facebook will tell you that this is perfectly safe, as you need to give the app permission to see this data – it’s not automatically available to the developer.

However, can you remember the last time you actually looked at the ‘Request for Access’ window that appears, would you notice the addition of ‘Current address and mobile phone number’ amongst the other things you’re granting the app access to?

If you’re happy with this information being taken by the app then click away and don’t worry. If you’re not happy (I can’t really think why anyone would be) then either read the Facebook Request for Access page a little better and tick and untick accordingly, or if you’re not sure you’ll remember, remove your address and phone numbers from Facebook altogether.

]]>http://steven.foers.co.uk/facebook/facebook-shares-more-of-your-private-info.html/feed0And another thing…http://steven.foers.co.uk/general/and-another-thing.html
http://steven.foers.co.uk/general/and-another-thing.html#commentsTue, 11 Jan 2011 23:39:56 +0000sfoershttp://steven.foers.co.uk/?p=69It looks rubbish here, I’m tinkering – and it may take a while.
]]>http://steven.foers.co.uk/general/and-another-thing.html/feed0Passwords, and how easy it is to crack themhttp://steven.foers.co.uk/security/passwords-and-how-easy-it-is-to-crack-them.html
http://steven.foers.co.uk/security/passwords-and-how-easy-it-is-to-crack-them.html#commentsFri, 17 Dec 2010 09:34:54 +0000sfoershttp://steven.foers.co.uk/?p=65Excellent write up on how easy it is to crack a password, and the implications of using the same username/password combination for multiple sites.

Interestingly, by adding a uppercase or special character into your 8 character password will make the time it takes to hack it go from 2.42 days to 2.10 centuries!